Puyo Puyo

Puyo Puyo

As we touched on previously, the first Puyo Puyo game was released in 1991,
the brainchild of designer Moo Niitani (real name Masamitsu Niitani). The first home
releases were very simple, with only single player modes where you can either make chains
endlessly for highscores or the "Mission" mode where you have to clear preset boards with
certain numbers of Puyo.

Puyo really became what we know it as today with the arcade release a year later, also
called Puyo Puyo, but with a competitive multiplayer mode added. It also added a story mode,
populated with Madou Monogatari characters. While the MM games have some sort of semblance
to a coherent plot and believability, the Puyo games have taken the characters and even
minor villains from the games and turn them into hilarious caricatures. Some of the characters
you will find include:

Arle NadjaThe heroine of the series who loves curry. She uses
elemental magic and her battlecries will be stuck in your head forever and ever. Her
actual characterization throughout the series seems to be based on being completely
dismayed at the actions of other characters.

CarbuncleArle's sidekick, who she calls Kaa-kun. He is
sickeningly cute and happy and you can't help but love him. He usually doesn't
do much except being cute and shooting laser through the gem in his forehead.
Also loves curry.

Draco CentaurosA dragon girl in a China dress. She wants
to be Arle's rival and will randomly challenge her and other girls to beauty contests.
The color of her tail is a hotly debated subject among the fandom.

WitchA proud witch who always keep a broom handy. She's
always experimenting and looking for ways to strengthen her magic.

Skeleton-TA skeleton that drinks tea who serves as one of
the early enemies. This guy is a joke and can kill himself faster than you can kill him.

SuketoudaraThe aforementioned fish with limbs. His dancing will haunt
you in your darkest nightmares.

HarpyA tone-deaf winged girl (not actually a harpy). She will sing to you
and then you'll probably skip the cutscene, because her singing is actually that bad.

SatanThe main antagonist of the series. Is actually a powerful magician
(although you'd never know it considering how he's like in the games) who comes up with silly
plots involving Arle. In the English version his name
was changed to Dark Prince by the PC squad.

RulueA martial artist who has an unhealthy obsession with Satan for some
inadequately explored reason. Hates Arle because Satan likes her.

There are also many more characters but these are the main ones, most of whom
recur throughout the whole series, even in the newer games where most of the original
cast has been discarded.

The mechanics of the game is exactly as described in the introduction. You make
chains and drop garbage on the opponent field. This is the competitive Puyo at its
simplest form. In single-player battles, each CPU will even have their own strategy
for playing, such as Suketoudara firing quick 2-3 chains at you, Harpy stacking Puyo
on the left and rightmost columns to try to make "luck" chains and Skeleton-T's strategy
seems to involve him mashing his face into the controller. It is a nice touch and
indeed many human players will utilize similar strategies to these CPU players.

A notable fact about this game is that it spawned quite a few official clones that
were distributed in the West, and since the original was never released on consoles
in English, these clone versions were the games that introduced many Western players
to the series. Puyo Puyo was licensed to Sega who replaced the cast with Sonic
characters and called it Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine and to Nintendo who did
the same with Kirby characters and renamed it Kirby's Avalanche (Kirby's Ghost Trap
in Europe). There are also various other lesser-known clones, such as a Lion King-themed
one called Timon and Pumbaa's Bug Drop and Qwirks, a generic clone marketed with the name
of creator of Tetris, Alexey Pajitnov, despite him not being involved in any way with the game.

For those of you who feel like going through the story mode with hilarious pseudo-English
translation, an English version of the arcade release can be found by looking for the ROM
called "Puyo Puyo (World)".